Humanity spends an increasing proportion of its time interacting online. Scholars are intensively investigating the societal drivers and resultant impacts of this collective shift in our allocation of time and attention. Yet, the external factors that regularly shape online behavior remain markedly understudied. Do environmental factors alter rates of online activity? Here we show that adverse meteorological conditions markedly increase social media use in the United States. To do so, we employ climate econometric methods alongside over three and a half billion social media posts from tens of millions of individuals from both Facebook and Twitter between 2009 and 2016. We find that more extreme temperatures and added precipitation each independently amplify social media activity. Weather that is adverse on both the temperature and precipitation dimensions produces markedly larger increases in social media activity. On average across both platforms, compared to the temperate weather baseline, days colder than -5{\deg}C with 1.5-2cm of precipitation elevate social media activity by 35%. This effect is nearly three times the typical increase in social media activity observed on New Year's Eve in New York City. We observe meteorological effects on social media participation at both the aggregate and individual level, even accounting for individual-specific, temporal, and location-specific potential confounds.

翻译：人类正将越来越多的日常时间用于在线互动。学者们正深入研究这种集体时间与注意力分配转变的社会驱动力及其影响后果。然而，能够规律性塑造在线行为的外部因素仍显著缺乏研究。环境因素是否会改变在线活动频率？本文通过分析美国2009年至2016年间来自Facebook和Twitter的数千万用户发布的超过35亿条社交媒体帖子，并采用气候计量经济学方法，证明恶劣气象条件会显著增加美国社交媒体使用量。研究发现，极端气温和降水量增加均会独立加剧社交媒体活动。当温度和降水量同时达到恶劣水平时，社交媒体活动增幅更为显著。平均而言，两个平台相较温和天气基准线，在温度低于-5°C且降水量为1.5-2厘米的寒冷天气中，社交媒体活动量提升35%。这一效应约为纽约市除夕夜典型社交媒体活动增幅的三倍。我们在总体与个体层面均观测到气象因素对社交媒体参与度的影响，且已充分考虑个体特征、时间因素及地理位置等潜在混杂变量。